Red's CD Project Part 3

Note: The lyrics really helped move this story along this week and moved in the direction that was starting shape in my head. A fortunate history search also helped create a nice little connection in the first section here. Enjoy!



Disc 1
Track 7
Everything
Buckcherry
15

Your eyes. Never close your eyes. Open up your mind and you can have everything.

His grandfather had died the year that Hal’s father started his Pre-Med courses at the university. But Hal’s father had kept countless pictures on the walls of their farm home. Even though, Hal had never met Herman Glock, Sr., he knew the face staring back in the old black and white photo.

After hanging up the phone, he had been drawn back to the chest and the picture. Right underneath the picture was a small hardcover book that Hal didn’t initially notice.

He knew he shouldn’t let Mary see him so shaken and still wearing the suit from his father’s funeral the day before. But he needed to solve the mystery of the familiar looking man standing next to his grandfather in the photo.

He turned the photo over. He first noticed a very faint date wrote in black ink – 1 Nov. 1918. Underneath in much clearer blue ink was written ‘pg. 206.’

Hal sat confused for a minute before remembering the book under his grandfather’s photograph. He picked up the book with the white jacket and big, bold black letters written across the front. Hal’s stomach churned.

It was titled – “Mein Kampf” by Adolf Hitler.

Hal nearly dropped the book as he looked back at the photo. He wanted to heave. Instead, he flipped the book to page 206. It was an English translation of the book. He started reading and flipped back a few pages to figure out the context.

After a few minutes, he discerned that Hitler was discussing his recovery from temporary blindness in the fall of 1918. It was in the hospital that Hitler found out about the end of the First World War. It was in these pages that the seeds of Hitler’s hate begin to grow. At the bottom of page 206, two paragraphs were highlighted.

“The more I tried to achieve clarity on the monstrous event in this hour, the more shame of indignation and disgrace burned my brow. What was all the pain in my eyes compared to this misery?”

“There followed terrible days and even worse nights – I knew all was lost. Only fools, lairs, and criminals could hope in the mercy of the enemy. In these nights hatred grew in me, hatred for those responsible for this deed.”

Hal shivered. Herman Glock, Sr. had been in medical school when WWI started. The war thrust him into active service as Germany’s brave men came back from the frontlines in pieces. Hal’s father had told him all about this.

Herman Glock, Sr. had been alone to deal with this turmoil and his other new responsibilities. His parents had been casualties of the war.

Hal knew what had happened. Herman Glock had been working in that hospital when a passionate young, blinded soldier was wheeled in. He knew enough about medicine to know the blindness would pass, but something inside clicked. This man was exactly what or who Herman Glock had been looking for.

When Germany surrendered, it was Herman Glock who whispered it to the blind man in his bed. The days and nights that followed as the soldier’s vision cleared, Glock filled the soldier’s ears with the shame and hate that all Germans and probably all Aryans should feel. He never pulled a trigger. He simply loaded the gun.

In the mid 1930s, Herman Glock Sr. moved to America, married a young, beautiful woman and bought a farm in the Midwest. He never practiced medicine again. He didn’t have to.

Hal dropped the book and the photo in the chest and dashed to the bathroom. He only barely made it before wrenching out yellow-brown bile into the toilet bowl.


Disc 1
Track 8
Move Along
The All-American Rejects
Move Along

When everything is wrong, we move along (Go on, go on, go on, go on)

“Oh, you just look miserable.”

Hal wanted to say that she didn’t look too great either, but didn’t have time as Mary crossed the threshold and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her breasts pressed tightly against his chest.

Her face was as pale as his had been after he mustered the strength to rise from the bathroom floor and stared into the mirror above the sink. He had quickly disrobed, showered and changed into a pair of sweat pants and a black T-Shirt.

Mary was wearing a pair of jeans, a sweater and apparently no bra. She just kept talking without releasing the embrace.

“I just had the worse feeling about you since waking up. I didn’t know what to do. I told you I wouldn’t come back. But I had to see you. I don’t know why.”

“Mary, I don’t understand what you’re blabbering about. I am fine.” That would have been a lie a few minutes ago, but with her there in his arms he did, in fact, feel fine. He felt....

“I just can’t explain it right. Something was just wrong. I could sense it all balled up in my stomach. All I could think about was my dream and you. Look at you.”

She moved her shoulders back and ran her hands through his still wet black hair.

“But now…” Her words stopped again.

“But now. I feel …”

“Right” they both said in unison.

In a blur of moments, the front door slammed, clothes went flying and they somehow progressed through the entryway, through the kitchen, past the living room where the chest still ominously sat and into the bedroom.


Disc 1
Track 9
You’re All I Have
Snow Patrol
Eyes Open

There is a darkness deep in you. A frightening magic I cling to.


Goosebumps teased their way to the surface of Mary’s skin. She was standing in only her pink panties in the living room. Three feet away on the floor was the monster from her dreams.

The wolf.

It had been real in her dream. It was chasing her and everyone she loved. The blood was dripping from its fangs and no matter how fast she ran it gained on her. It was on her heels when she awoke that morning in a scream.

Right after that scream, Hal popped into her head and that had brought her back to the man she had damned to hell only a couple months earlier.

He was soundly asleep after their session of love.

But this wolf wasn’t real. It was carved into the top of an old chest. She dropped into the recliner beside the chest. Her gut told her not to open it. Her heart screamed the same. So she just sat there and traced her finger along the carving of the wolf.

It didn’t seem so scary in the light of the day, didn’t feel so wrong. In fact, there was a peace in it. There was a truth that was refreshing. She needed the wolf. They (whoever they were) needed the wolf.

She thought of Hal and sighed.

Minutes later and fully clothed, she scribbled a message on a piece of paper she found on the end table next to recliner. She left the note on top of the chest covering the wolf and walked out the front door.